Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Debashish Munshi & Priya KurianWhile leaders of more than 190 nations
are currently deliberating on climate action at the COP 21 summit of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, millions of ordinary
citizens have taken to the streets in cities and towns around the world to make
sure their voices are heard. These citizens fully understand the implications
of the science of climate change and they don’t want political leaders to drag
their feet on taking urgent action to arrest and reverse the devastating impacts
of climate change.

The effects of climate change are
there for the world to see. The Indian Prime Minister and his entourage were in
Paris this week when the southern city of Chennai (formerly Madras) in his
country was deluged by the worst rains in over a hundred years, killing nearly
200 people, submerging homes, and cutting off power and transport links. The havoc caused was so unusual that even the
city’s venerable newspaper, The Hindu, couldn’t cover the disaster as it
couldn’t bring its edition out for the first time since its inception in 1878.
This calamity, exacerbated if not entirely caused by poor urban planning, ties
in with the alternating bouts of heavy rainfall and drought in different parts
of the world, stifling heat in temperate zones, and a spate of cyclones,
tornadoes, and typhoons.

In an earlier blog, we had highlighted
recent studies published in PUS that show the importance of emphasising
local contexts and framing information that people can relate to in conceivable
terms to get people to act on climate change. The increasing regularity of what
are seen as unusual climate events have made it easier for people to
acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-induced climate
change.

As social scientists and science
communicators with a special interest in climate action, we (along with John Foran and Kum-Kum Bhavnani of the University of California, Santa Barbara) recently organised
an international symposium on ‘ClimateFutures’ at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in July this year to
brainstorm innovative ideas to combat climate change. The 19 of us, from 17 countries across six
continents, had a range of perspectives to share but we were all united in
centring the idea of justice in action that the world takes.

Following
the symposium, John, Kum-Kum-Kum, and the two of us, along with most of the symposium participants, sent an open letter to the executive secretary of UNFCCC,
Christiana Figueres, and the President of COP21, Laurent Fabius, urging them to
make sure the delegates “focus more sharply on the plight of those most
vulnerable, e.g. who live in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Kiribati in the
Pacific, the Philippines in Asia, and Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa,
and who face the risk of being drowned or losing their freshwater resources as
sea levels rise.”

We
make the case for “an ambitious and legally binding treaty, one that is both
effective and equitable” and call for a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions so that global temperatures rise no more than 1.5° Celsius,” and for
developed nations to take greater responsibilities in mitigating climate change
by way of setting aside substantial new funds for climate action as well as
free technology transfer to poorer nations.

We also press the need to keep
corporate lobbyists out of the frame of the COP process.

We hope international governments can demonstrate as much understanding
of the science of climate change as the young people who are marching on the
streets to protect the planet for the future.

Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Way back in 1972, the meteorologist Edward Lorenz used an
attractive rhetorical question to talk about unpredictability: “Does the flap
of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Lorenz’s exploration of the link between the
aerial pyrotechnics of a tiny butterfly in the southern hemisphere and a
violent vortex of powerful winds in the north may have been metaphorical. But what he was getting at was that the
atmosphere is sensitive enough for a disturbance in one part of the earth to
have a cascading effect on the other.

Climate change is a case in point. Since the advent of
industrialization, copious amounts of greenhouse gases emitted by the most
industrially developed parts of the world (read rich nations) have had a
devastating impact on the earth’s atmosphere but the consequences of these
actions are being borne by the least developed
territories (read poor nations).
In other words, poor farmers in Bangladesh or Maldives or in one of the
Pacific Islands are watching their fertile lands slip away into the saline depths
of rising oceans because of decades of affluent, carbon-intensive lifestyles of
those on another side of the world.

Yet, many people on this “right” side of the world are
barely aware of the plight of their fellow earthlings, even less so about their
own contributions to the sorry state of affairs. For them, it is a problem they
have no part in. But what if the images from far-flung island nations are
replaced by those of some of the most iconic American cities – New York or
Boston or Miami? Well, these images don’t need to be computer-generated – it may
well be a reality in our own lifetimes.

A study just published in the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences warns that the “cultural legacy” of some of the best-known
cities in the US is under threat of being submerged under rising sea levels.
And these include New York City, Boston, New Orleans, and Miami. Indeed, the
landmarks of these historic places could well become part of an underwater
museum that no one will ever get to visit. But, as one of the study’s principal
authors, Benjamin Strauss, told the Huffington Post, many of these
“cities can be saved if people take swift action against carbon
emissions.”

There is some hope that more people will pay heed to the
long-ringing warning bells now that the threat is much more “local” than ever
before. The influence of local events in changing perceptions cannot be
underestimated. And this is, by no
means, limited to the affluent world.

In an article in the latest issue of PUS, Alex Lo of Griffith University,
Australia, and C.Y. Jim of the University of Hong Kong, emphasise the
importance of ‘localising’ climate change information for people to act
pro-actively in climate mitigation actions. Their study found that
“concerns about climate change increase with expectations about adverse weather
events” in their own region. As “knowledge and/or experience of local weather
events could enable people to readily comprehend the problem of climate
change,” they say that “making the causal linkage explicit is crucial.” Clearly,
climate action messages “tailored” for local contexts are important because “ordinary
people tend to see global climate change as a distant probability or
uncertainty that is geographically and/or temporally detached from their
everyday life.”

The same issue of PUS also has an article by Adeniyi P.
Asiyanbi on a Nigeria-based study which shows that “social situatedness, more
than scientific facts, is the most important definer of overall engagement with
climate change.” In fact, in echoing the findings of the Hong Kong-based study
of Lo and Jim, Asiyanbi’s article makes a case for framing information about
climate change which the targeted audience can relate to in concrete and easily
conceivable terms.

The two studies are important not only for their practical
recommendations for enhancing public understanding of climate science but also
for empirical research in specific local contexts of Hong Kong and
Nigeria. As the journal's editor notes, the latest issue
of PUS is particularly distinctive because it is the first issue in which all
the articles featured are from outside the usual catchment areas of the US and
Europe. The issue also features research
from China, India, Japan, Taiwan, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Saturday, 5 September 2015

When the 18th-century English poet Thomas Gray said
“where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise,” he wasn’t, as urban myths
often assume, suggesting that being ignorant bestows people with a sense of
pleasure and contentment. He was merely reflecting back to his joyous time of
learning at Eton College where he was once a student. Regardless of Gray’s much-quoted and misrepresented lines, ignorance
tends to be characterised as an antonym of knowledge.

The relationship between
the two, however, is much more complex. Neither knowledge nor ignorance is
absolute. After all, people with knowledge in certain areas may be ignorant in
other areas. Knowledge is not synonymous with wisdom either as is evident in the
many acts of folly committed by those with years of meticulous knowledge
accumulation in centres of higher education. How else do we explain the endless
spirals of mindless wars, environmental degradation, and corporate greed in the
world? And what about the likes of religious fanatics, misogynists, and climate
sceptics? Wouldn’t the label of ‘ignorant’ be much too benign for such
politically regressive groups?

Indeed, it is politics that navigates the space between knowledge
and ignorance. The politics of power drives scientific research on “defence”
and the politics of business works on the commercialisation of ideas and
knowledge generation. Both thrive on a discourse of ignorance to exploit a
constructed climate of uncertainty about issues around security, health, and
well-being. And then there is the ambiguous area of ideology as well. For
example, are parents who refuse to vaccinate their children “ignorant” or just
proponents of a particular ideology? For many, taking a ‘natural’ path to
healthcare, which includes rejecting vaccinations, is an ideological position
that assumes nature and the ‘natural’ stand in opposition to science.

The knowledge-ignorance dichotomy is particularly strong in
the discourses of science and technology. The early 20th century
philosopher of science Karl Popper believed that scientific knowledge was
evolutionary. As he argued in All Life is Problem Solving, the advance
of scientific knowledge stopped ignorance in its tracks. But he didn’t contend
with the explicit politicization of science and technology which leads to
people making judgements on science based on their own political affiliations. A
recent special issue of Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on “The Politics of Science: Political Values
and the Production, Communication, and Reception of Scientific Knowledge”
explores this interplay between science and politics in considerable depth. The
special issue editors, Elizabeth Suhay and James Druckman, point out that
debates over issues of science such as evolution, stem cell research, use of
nuclear power, and fracking, are intensely political. As they point out in
their introduction to the special issue, “A range of humanvalues, including political and religious ones, influence the
process of scientificdiscovery as well
as the dissemination and public reception of scientific findings.”

In an article in this same special issue, Mathew Nisbet and Declan Fahy have called upon
journalists in particular to draw on “expert knowledge” and “facilitate
discussion” to not only bridge ideological divisions but also to get people to
look more broadly at the interplay between technologies and policy options.
Such a call is part of a growing campaign to foster stronger, structured, and
succinct science communication to spread scientific knowledge to the masses.

Nisbet and Fahy’s piece is in fact the
starting point for a thought-provoking commentary in Public Understanding of Science by Kristian H.
Nielsen and Mads P. Sørensen (now available online ahead of print). These two
scholars from Aarhus University of Denmark endorse Nisbet and Fahy’s call but
go a step beyond to make a bold statement of their own. They say that alongside
knowledge, science communicators need to pay a lot more attention to the idea
of ignorance too. Arguing that ignorance
or “non-knowledge” is here to stay and is not something that will eventually go
away, they “assert that different forms of ignorance not only are fundamental
to processes of scientific knowledge production but also are virtuous to
democratic deliberation”. They argue that focusing on how ignorance works in
different settings can help “develop even more diverse and socially responsible
practices within science communication.”

In discussing ignorance or
non-knowledge in its many facets, Nielsen and Sorensen’s commentary makes
critical distinctions among “known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, and
unknown unknowns.” Getting a closer understanding of the contexts in which
these four domains of knowledge/non-knowledge function is a nuanced way of
seeing how society interacts with science and technology. In some ways, this
quest runs parallel to the voyage of self-discovery depicted in the four
quadrants of Joseph Luft and Harry Ingram’s self-awareness formulation, the
Johari Window – the open self, the blind self, the hidden self, and the unknown
self.

Thursday, 30 July 2015

Debashish Munshi & Priya KurianAren’t the
red flags around freak floods, unprecedented heat waves, long spells of severe
drought, and increasing frequency of unseasonal, high-intensity typhoons,
cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes enough to warn us of the perils of climate
change? What about the slow and steady rise of sea levels that are threatening
the sheer existence of nations around the world ranging from the Maldives in
the Indian Ocean, Cape Verde in the Atlantic, and Kiribati in the Pacific?

Climate
Change is real and scientists are near unanimous not only about its devastating
effects on the planet we inhabit but also about its potential to create social
and economic havoc with disastrous consequences for humanity. Yet, as we also
know, nation states, especially the large and influential but fossil
fuel-guzzling and polluting ones most responsible for anthropogenic climate
change, are reluctant to take bold political steps to stem the tide. Year after
year, the grand ritual of the United Nations-mandated Conference of the Parties
(COP) yields very little in terms of tangible political change by the nations
with the most clout.

The two of us
were among 18 scholars and activists at an international symposium on Climate Futures: Re-imagining climate justice at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio,
Italy, this month to try and find alternative pathways to move forward and do
something to push the agenda for a just climate action that brought together
issues of environmental and social justice.

While the deliberations touched
upon a number of issues, including on how to approach the COPs, there were some
interesting discussions along the side-lines as well. One of these
discussions revolved around the need to champion people with a strong
environmental and social conscience and a willingness to lead, who can be
actively involved at the COPs and other meetings of nation states. In
democracies, as many of the influential countries indeed are, the only
pragmatic way would be to get such people elected to the highest public
offices. On paper, the solution seems simple – mobilise people to vote for
people with such a conscience. In other words, get the people most concerned
about climate change to go out and vote for candidates who reflect this concern,
and target and inform those who seem less concerned with focused communication
interventions. In practice, of course, the challenges to such actions are many.
Yet, they are nevertheless important to include in the array of measures
advocated by climate justice activists.

Social
science researchers working in the area of science and technology already have a
conceptual map that can be the foundation for such a communication
intervention. In 2009, Anthony Leiserowitz and his colleagues outlined what
they called “Global Warming’s Six Americas” in which they classified the US
into six distinctly identifiable groups based on their attitudes towards
climate change: the Alarmed, the Concerned, the Cautious, the Disengaged, the
Doubtful, and the Dismissive. Studies involving such demographic
categorisations on attitudes to climate change have subsequently been extended
to India and Australia as well.

What is
particularly interesting about the studies by Leiserowitz et al and Metag et al
is that they identify a direct correlation between the characteristics of each
of the categories and their use of communication channels such as the mass
media and the internet. By and large, those most alarmed by climate change used
the media most and sought for information across a variety of media channels
while those in the other categories had a markedly lower use of the media with
the last couple of categories relying mainly on family and friends for sources
of information.

As Metag et
al point out, these “results are relevant not only for the scientific study of
attitudes toward climate change” but also “for communication campaigns to raise
people’s awareness of and actions toward climate change”. For example, since
the ‘Doubtful’ “do not look for information about climate change intentionally
but come across it during their everyday, routine media use”, this group could
be “confronted with information about climate change unexpectedly on
television, as ‘by-catch’ while watching something else”. Similarly, the
‘Disengaged’ who “do not engage much in environmentally friendly behavior,
perhaps due to their lower social status, especially their low income” could
be addressed with entertaining information
that “stress inexpensive methods for changing behavior” through tabloids, their
preferred media. See the article by Metag et al for further details.

Targeted
communication campaigns on changing attitudes could work hand-in-hand with
political initiatives to get political figures most likely to work on climate
action elected to decision-making bodies and with other initiatives, such as
grassroots community-level work, to create a momentum towards transformative
change for climate justice.

Friday, 1 May 2015

Priya Kurian & Debashish MunshiIt’s 25 years since the field of feminist
science and technology studies (FSTS) was launched with the publication of The
Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution by
environmental historian and philosopher of science Carolyn Merchant.It’s
also the 20th anniversary of feminist scientist Evelyn Fox-Keller’s path-breaking
Reflections on Gender and Science. Merchant, Keller and numerous other
scholars including Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Nancy Tuana (to name just a few)
illuminated not only why gender and feminism were central to understanding the
social construction of science, but also the inherent sexism in the practice
and study of science. The critiques they offered ripped apart the cloak of
objectivity that was wrapped around the pursuit of science, and laid bare the
consequences of the value-laden gender divides for not only women scientists
but also the academic realm of science itself.

We would have thought that the contributions
of the burgeoning and exciting field of FSTS would have had some impact in
changing the ways in which science researchers and practitioners looked at
issues of gender and science. Yet, the challenge of eradicating sexism in
science is as formidable as ever.

Our current blog has been sparked by the
shocking news of an utterly sexist review received by two women researchers on
a manuscript they submitted to a scientific journal. Believe it or not, the two women co-authors,
one a UK-based evolutionary geneticist and the other an Australia-based
evolutionary biologist, were asked to “find one or two male biologists to work
with” to make sure they didn’t drift “too far away from empirical evidence into
ideologically-biased assumptions” (see Science magazine for a report on
the incident). Wow! Is ‘objectivity’ the exclusive domain of men? Aren’t men
ideologically-driven? In fact, doesn’t the review perfectly demonstrate just
how ideological and profoundly sexist so-called “peer review” can be?

While social media as well as mainstream
media are agog with the news, sexism continues to cast a shadow on the world of
science. The ideological biases of a male-centric domain make it particularly
difficult for women scientists to thrive and survive. A recent compilation of
the discursive (and other) assaults on women in the world of science (See
article in the Huffington Post) reveals how women face extraordinary
psychological pressures of demeaning and belittling sexist statements such as
“You are not smart enough to be a biologist” or “You are too pretty to be a
physicist”.

The systematic exclusion of women from the “boys’ networks” in the
sciences and the derailment of careers and opportunities for women demonstrate
how far we yet have to go.

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Debashish Munshi & Priya KurianOne of us was talking to our colleague
David McKie today about re-designing a course we teach and he said that one way
of taking the course into the future was to facilitate the extinction of some ideas
that we feel obliged to work with and generate fresh ways of thinking and
communicating.

It’s during this conversation that David
referred us to John Brockman’s just-released anthology This Idea Must Die:Scientific Theories that are Blocking Progress (New York: Harper Perennial).
The volume is a collection of answers provided by well-known as well as
not-so-well-known scientists, writers, and thinkers to Brockman’s question
“What scientific idea is ready for retirement” on his popular digital discussion
platform Edge.

We haven’t read this new book yet but
going by the reviews, it looks like it is engaging and thought-provoking. Writing
about the volume in a recent issue of New Scientist, Simon Ings says
that “Some ideas cited in the book
are so annoying that we would be better off without them, even though they are
true. Take "brain plasticity". This was a real thing once upon a
time, but the phrase spread promiscuously into so many corners of neuroscience
that no one really knows what it means anymore.” Ings’s favourite response
in the volume is from the “paleontologist Julia Clarke” who would like people “to
stop asking her where feathered dinosaurs leave off and birds begin” because
making sense of animal behaviour based on fossil data is far too complex than
linear projections.

Science advances by discovering
new things and developing new ideas. Few truly new ideas are developed without
abandoning old ones first. As theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947)
noted, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
In other words, science advances by a series of funerals. Why wait that long?

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS
READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Ideas
change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is
the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved
aside so that science can advance?

A total of 175 responses came in and each
of them is fascinating in its own right. Maria Popova’s review of the book on
the Brain Pickings site goes over what she describes as “a catalog of broken theories that hold us back
from the conquest of Truth” and these range from IQ to the left brain vs. right
brain divide; from human nature to romantic love. Popova chronicles in detail
many of the responses that capture the interplay between philosophy and science
and shows how public understanding of science is also inherently philosophical.

While on public understanding of science and a
word we started this blog with – extinction, an article forthcoming in PUS focuses
on whether extinction refers to a point of no return or whether scientists and
the lay public alike cause confusion by misusing the term to mean different
things in different contexts. For example, can there be such a thing as “local
extinction”? Or, for that matter, can species declared extinct be resurrected?

The article by Brenda D. Smith-Patten, Eli S. Bridge, Priscilla H. C. Crawford,
Daniel J. Hough, Jeffrey F. Kelly and Michael A. Patten of the University of
Oklahoma, USA, argues that frequent misuse of the term has major consequences
for systematic conservation action. A loose expression of ‘extinction’ such as
conflating it with extirpation (disappearance of a species in a particular
geographical area despite being in existence elsewhere), they say, “will result
in the term failing to spark the sense of urgency needed for grass roots
conservation action and policy change.” Also, there is a tendency to “trumpet
rediscoveries or reversals of extinction” which are equally misplaced as they
often refer to the sighting of species that had not been seen since being
declared extinct.

Clearly, for the authors, extinction is
irreversible. It is part of the biological processes of evolution. Living
species do have a life span which depends to a large extent on physical and environmental
contexts. But work in biology keeps progressing. Surely, ideas have a life span
too and it should be fine for some to die out when they are no longer relevant.

Thursday, 26 February 2015

Debashish Munshi & Priya KurianThe hugely popular sitcom Big BangTheory is now in its eighth season. In so many ways, it’s like other hit
television sitcoms – the joys and sorrows of human relationships, the art and
science of human communication, the kindness and meanness of human behaviour,
and the rationality and emotionality of human actions. Like Friends,
another legendary sitcom, Big Bang Theory revolvesaround the
lives and times of a group of friends and acquaintances.

The difference, however, is that the main
characters of this show are scientifically inclined, including two physicists,
an astrophysicist, a neuroscientist, a microbiologist, and an aerospace
engineer. Their conversations among themselves as well as those with lay people
are both thought-provoking and funny. But
inevitably, the conversations have science either in the foreground or in the
background. Take a recent episode, for example, when two of the characters
seeking to lead a dark matter research expedition in a salt mine are questioned
by their friends who don’t believe they have the necessary attributes to
withstand the difficult conditions. The characters go about proving their
mettle by sweating it out in the extremely hot and narrow confines of a steam
tunnel at their University. No matter how funny the dialogues or the settings
are, the science in the sitcom is always accurate.

In an earlier blog, we talked about science and humour and how science comedy is indeed a current rage. So are humour and entertainment effective
vehicles for science communication? Do they help broaden public understanding
of science? Given that science has typically been perceived as a world of
complex equations and theorems and abstract theories – in other words, an
exclusive domain for nerds, the use of humour does help break down perceptual
barriers. Teachers often use jokes and fun experiments to attract the attention
of students to understand concepts. But they also run the risk of
over-simplification and stereotyping of science and scientists.

In an article forthcoming in PUS(also referred to in an earlier blog), Hauke
Riesch of Brunel University undertakes a critical review of the literature on
humour and science communication. The article is aptly titled “Why did the proton cross the road?” The author draws on insights from the sociology of
humour to take a deep look at the effects of humour on “the science-public
relationship” and notes that these effects may not always be benign or helpful
to the cause of public engagement”. Some obvious benefits notwithstanding,
there are some pitfalls of using humour injudiciously. These pitfalls, Riesch
says, include “fostering ingroup cohesion through insider jokes and the
construction of reverse-dialogue re-appropriations of the geek stereotype or by
excluding imagined outgroups through negative stereotyping”.

There has, of course, always been a fine line between making science fun and making fun of it in the context of public understanding of science. Now is the time for a meaningful conversation on whether science should be portrayed as 'fun' or 'funny' and whether losing sight of the line between fun and funny has an impact on public understanding of science.

About this Blog

This is the Public Understanding of Science journal's blog on science and society. The two of us running the blog are PRIYA KURIAN and DEBASHISH MUNSHI, both at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.
We facilitate discussion on some of the exciting research published or forthcoming in PUS. But this blog is not just about PUS articles alone. It is a forum for all those engaged with doing and communicating science to discuss, debate, and deliberate on often contentious issues.
We welcome contributions on public engagement with contemporary issues around science and technology, including links to articles, news reports, photographs, video clips, and web sites.

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